I think this has potential for us all. I'm looking forward to the new engines and technologies we will create to use this new source of hydrocarbons.
Or maybe we'll just re-engineer the bacteria to get it to produce something closer to the hydrocarbons we currently use (and probably create a
monster at the same time).

I wonder whether we'll be able to add this to our compost heaps? Or will the petrol companies engineer a campaign to wipe out this helpful
bacterium?

Scientists were amazed to find that it was able to convert plant cellulose directly into the biofuel, dubbed "myco-diesel".

Crops normally have to be converted to sugar and fermented before they can be turned into useful fuel.

Professor Gary Strobel, from Montana State University in the US, said: "G. roseum can make myco-diesel directly from cellulose, the main compound
found in plants and paper. This means if the fungus was used to make fuel, a step in the production process could be skipped."

Prof Strobel led an investigation into novel fungi in the rainforests of northern Patagonia, which cross the borders of Argentina and Chile.

He found that when the diesel fuel fungus was exposed to potentially toxic antibiotics, it reacted defensively by generating volatile gases.

"Then when we examined the gas composition of G. roseum, we were totally surprised to learn that it was making a plethora of hydrocarbons and
hydrocarbon derivatives," he said.

"The results were totally unexpected and very exciting and almost every hair on my arms stood on end."

Cellulose provides the fibrous supporting structure of plants. During biofuel production, cellulose from plant waste is first treated with enzymes
that turn it into sugar. Microbes then ferment the sugar into inflammable ethanol.

Nearly 430 million tonnes of plant waste is produced from farmland each year around the world.

Prof Strobel said: "We were very excited to discover that G. roseum can digest cellulose. Although the fungus makes less myco-diesel when it feeds on
cellulose compared to sugars, new developments in fermentation technology and genetic manipulation could help improve the yield.

"In fact, the genes of the fungus are just as useful as the fungus itself in the development of new biofuels."

Hmmm... a "new supply of green energy?" The fungus produces hydrocarbons similar to diesel feul?

OK, I gotta ask again, are we alegedly destroying the planet because of burning hydrocarbons or because our main source of hydrocarbons requires us to
drill or dig into the crust of the Earth?

The green crowd wonders often how folks like myself can make the claim that man driven global warming is bullcrap and based off junk science and is
nothing more than another way to separate the average worker from their money... well, here ya go. Mixed messages and so-called "experts" confusing
the terminology they invented do not build confidence.

In fact, it's so good at turning plant matter into fuel that researchers say their discovery calls into question the whole theory of how crude oil
was made by nature in the first place.

While many crops and microbes can be combined to make biofuels — including the fungi that became infamous as jungle rot during WWII — the newfound
fungus could greatly simplify the process, its discoverers claim. Researchers have suggested that billions of acres of fallow farmland could be used
to grow the raw material of biofuels. But turning corn stalks or switchgrass into fuel is a painstaking process and the end product is expensive and
not entirely friendly to the environment.

I think if we grow some of these trees and make some of this fungus we can get rich selling bio diesel.
But the fact is its still burning fossil fuels.
Its not green energy.
Depending of course on what is put out as a waste.
Which considering it to be a hydrocarbon similar to diesel it would more than likely put out the same crap.

Green this, hydro carbon that, it is all just a scam. Maybe you all forgot how the elites tried to con everyone into thinking we were makeing the
earth colder around about the 60/70's? That was thrown out the window pretty fast by experts back then, just like global warming will be done sooner
or later.

The earth goes through cooling and heating cycles, the elite are just using the current heating cycle to rape us of more cash. Of course they have
greater media control then back in the 60/70's so the campaign is more successful, also less likely to get thrown out the window untill people
realise the earth is beggining to cool again.

As for this Fungus, bloody heck, that is sweet news to me. Now instead of flushing our crap, we can turn it into diesel for our cars

. A few
thousand hectare of this stuff, would put out enough dieself or majority of the world I would imagine, feed it cow/horse/cattle dung and food waste
from all over the world. Will save on land fill also

Well, I'm all for experimentation, and supporting those who experiment as well... but I fail to see how a fungus can be used in a mass production
environment, capable of producing enough fuel for the worlds fleets of vehicles.

No... the best bet up to now for alternative energy remains electric (hardly alternative I know). It's good enough for our factories, it's good
enough for our cars.

Originally posted by johnsky
Well, I'm all for experimentation, and supporting those who experiment as well... but I fail to see how a fungus can be used in a mass production
environment, capable of producing enough fuel for the worlds fleets of vehicles.

No... the best bet up to now for alternative energy remains electric (hardly alternative I know). It's good enough for our factories, it's good
enough for our cars.

You'd be surprised what you can do with living organism's.
Look what we do with bacteria everyday.
Imagine sticking some mushrooms in your car and driving 100 miles.

Remember the dude in that movie who wanted to tow the iceberg from the north pole to Africa to water the desert?

I think the move forward in energy will come when they discover and make available the already known and classified isotopes and elements which
produce great energy without the sickening radiation to carbon life forms.
If you can envisage for a moment another 100 elements on the periodic table, some of them on the higher end, would have radiation that would not even
exist in this dimension.
Therefore we as carbon life forms could harness the energy but not have the danger.
I remember someone once said "How absurd you can never have anymore elements we have discovered them all, we are trained professionals!".

Even if it were to be able to meet a small fraction of our fuel needs it would be a valuable step. It's worth investigating at the very least. There
is not going to be any one grand slam idea for solving our energy needs till fusion plants happen. This is one of the new frontiers (alternative
energy sources) of science.

Fungi grow quite quickly so I expect that with enough determination we'll be able cultivate and hybridize/genetically altar this particular one to
meet a lot of our hydrocarbon needs.

Just ask a vegetarian about Quorn meat. There's a lot of that produced to meet human demand. Even
better, ask the drinkers among us how many gallons of alcohol are produced each year from the yeast, another fungi type, that produce a usable
hydrogen, carbon and oxygen based byproduct.

Edited to add: Something even more important that's discussed in the Cosmos article is another discovery: two fungi that produce antibiotic gas (a
gas that kills other fungi). I hope we don't use this antibiotic gas too much though because we might end up accidentally killing some of the most
important life forms on earth.

Edited again to add these paragraphs from the Cosmos article
(because it suggests ways to use it; and shows the discoverer is good natured and fortuitous:

Instead of using farmland to grow biofuels, G. roseum could be grown in factories, like baker's yeast, and its gases siphoned off to be liquefied
into fuel, he suggested. Another alternative, he said, would be to strip out the enzyme-making genes from the fungus and use this to break down the
cellulose to make the biodiesel.

Strobel said Montana State University had filed patents for the fungus, proceeds of which would be shared with local people in Patagonia.

Asked where the fungus had been found, he pointed to the experiences of the 1848 gold rush and said the location had to be protected: "The answer to
that is, what if we pushed ourselves back about a hundred and fifty years and you heard a story about a guy finding gold out in California?"

The find is even bigger, said Strobel, than his 1993 discovery of fungus that contained the anticancer drug taxol.

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